Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS

Forty Years Later

Aimee Pozorski; Jennifer J. Lavoie and Christine J. Cynn - Contributions by Michael Broder; Ryan Calabretta-Sajder; Shelley W. Chan; Andy Eicher; Nels P. Highberg; Mariarosa Loddo; Alison Patev and Dirk Visser

Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS: Forty Years Later depicts how film and literature about the HIV/AIDS crisis expand upon the issues generated by the epidemic. This collection fills an important gap in the scholarship on HIV/AIDS, by bringing together essays by both established and junior scholars on visual and literary representations of HIV/AIDS. Almost forty years after the first reported cases of what would later be defined as AIDS, this book looks back across the decades at works of literature and film to discuss how the representation of HIV/AIDS has shifted in media. This book argues that literature constitutes a very powerful response to AIDS that ripples into film and politics, driving the changes in past and contemporary representations of HIV/AIDS. The book also expands discussion of the issues generated and amplified by the epidemic to consider how HIV/AIDS has been portrayed in the United States, Western and Southern Africa, Western Europe, and East Asia.

Lexington Books

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-8446-3 • Hardback • November 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-8448-7 • Paperback • April 2023 • $39.99 • (£30.00)

978-1-4985-8447-0 • eBook • November 2019 • $38.00 • (£30.00)

Series: Reading Trauma and Memory

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Historical Events, Literary Criticism / LGBT

Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS

Forty Years Later

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS: Forty Years Later depicts how film and literature about the HIV/AIDS crisis expand upon the issues generated by the epidemic. This collection fills an important gap in the scholarship on HIV/AIDS, by bringing together essays by both established and junior scholars on visual and literary representations of HIV/AIDS. Almost forty years after the first reported cases of what would later be defined as AIDS, this book looks back across the decades at works of literature and film to discuss how the representation of HIV/AIDS has shifted in media. This book argues that literature constitutes a very powerful response to AIDS that ripples into film and politics, driving the changes in past and contemporary representations of HIV/AIDS. The book also expands discussion of the issues generated and amplified by the epidemic to consider how HIV/AIDS has been portrayed in the United States, Western and Southern Africa, Western Europe, and East Asia.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-8446-3 • Hardback • November 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-8448-7 • Paperback • April 2023 • $39.99 • (£30.00)

978-1-4985-8447-0 • eBook • November 2019 • $38.00 • (£30.00)

Series: Reading Trauma and Memory

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Historical Events, Literary Criticism / LGBT

Author

Christine Cynn is associate professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Jennifer Lavoie is instructor of English and American Studies at Central Connecticut State University.

Aimee Pozorski is professor of English and director of English graduate studies at Central Connecticut State University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS: An Introduction, Christine Cynn and Aimee Pozorski

Chapter 2: Countering the Plague: AIDS Theatre as a Site of Memory, Dirk Visser

Chapter 3: Poetry before Protease, Nels P. Highberg

Chapter 4: Early Representations of “IT”: AIDS, The American Canon, and Robert Ferro’s Second Son, Ryan Calabretta-Sajder

Chapter 5: Borrowed Time, Body Counts, and the Nearness of Others: Three Approaches to AIDS Memoirs, Jennifer Lavoie

Chapter 6: Guibert before Guibert: AIDS and Literary Creation, Mariarosa Loddo

Chapter 7: The Dream, the Disease, and the Disaster: On Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village, Shelley W. Chan

Chapter 8: Abortion and Family as HIV Prevention Strategies: Kitia Touré’s Les gestes ou la vie, Christine Cynn

Chapter 9: When “Safe” Isn’t Safe: Reflecting on the Role of Science in the Production of Harmful Discourse of HIV/AIDS, Alison Patev

Chapter 10: Exceptional PrEParations: Pharmaceutical Interventions, Neoliberal Queerness, and Truvada, Andy Eicher

Chapter 11: “We should be embracing the infected, the HIV-positive, and showering them not only with love, but with medical care and psychosocial services”: An Interview with Michael Broder, Jennifer Lavoie and Michael Broder

Reviews

Bringing together both literature and the visual arts in the depiction of the HIV/AIDS crisis from a global perspective, Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS makes a significant contribution to our understanding and witness of this epidemic and how it impacts the lives and institutions of people around the world. The contributions to this collection are nuanced and lasting, making us empathetic to the suffering and calling for us an ethical response to it.
— Lee Trepanier, Assumption University

Notable for their robust range of critical perspectives across genre, media, and national boundaries, the essays in this collection move fluently between the early days of the epidemic to the present, suggesting startling continuities and fissures among representations of HIV/AIDS and their analyses. Here cultural critique supplements the best kind of close reading, at once imaginative and historically accountable, laying bare the neoliberalization of social policy as well the enduring rhetoric of blame/responsibility in all its stigmatizing force. The attention to forgotten and neglected texts especially will invigorate discussions of HIV/AIDS and the politics of representation.
— Hiram Perez, Vassar College